It is vital the NHS addresses complaints in a way which satisfies patients and their families in order to maintain confidence in the service. Complaints can also be an early warning of systemic problems; the Chair of the public inquiry into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust said that “The Trust failed to listen to patients' concerns, the Board did not review the substance of complaints and incident reports were not given the necessary attention.”
There is a new system in place, and the Health Service Ombudsman has just produced a report on its first year of operation. In her foreword to that report, she says that “The NHS needs to listen harder and learn more from complaints. When it fails to do so, it is missing a rich source of insight and information that is freely and readily available and comes directly from service users.”
Litigation as a means of seeking redress for failures in treatment imposes a significant cost on the NHS. NHS institutions spend hundreds of millions of pounds in premium to insure against litigation, and that does not cover the independent sector, including General Practitioners, who make their own arrangements.
The Committee would like to receive written evidence on the following issues in particular:
Complaints
• The reasons for the recent sharp rise in NHS complaints.
• The effectiveness of the new complaints system introduced on 1 April 2009.
• The effectiveness of the constituent parts of the complaints system: local resolution (supported by the Independent Complaints Advocacy Services); and referral to the Ombudsman.
• The role of Patient Advice and Liaison Services as a “gateway” to the complaints system.
• The failure of some Foundation Trusts to report numbers of complaints.
• The Government’s plans for future complaints-handling arrangements (the White Paper says, on p. 19, “Local authorities will be able to commission local HealthWatch or HealthWatch England to provide advocacy and support ... supporting individuals who want to make a complaint”).
• How data from complaints will feed into the planned new commissioning arrangements (the White Paper says, at Para. 2.26, “Building on existing complaints handling structures, we will strengthen arrangements for information sharing”).
Litigation
• The cost of litigation against the NHS.
• Reasons for the inflation of litigation costs in recent years.
• The impact of conditional fee (“no win, no fee”) arrangements on litigation against the NHS.
• The effect of litigation on the development of an open reporting and learning culture in the NHS.
• The Government’s intentions regarding the implementation of the NHS Redress Act 2006.
• The possible benefits of a statutory right to compensation for “treatment injury” from an independent fund, without the need to prove negligence, as required under tort law.
• Encouraging the use of mediation before litigation is initiated
The deadline for submitting written evidence is noon on Tuesday 21 December 2010.
Guidance on submitting written evidence It assists the Committee if those submitting written evidence adhere to the following guidelines:
Each submission should:
• state clearly who the submission is from, ie whether from yourself in a personal capacity (eg Submission from Miss Dee Dee Lee) or sent on behalf of an organisation (eg Submission from Insert Name Ltd)
• be 3,000 words in length;
• as far as possible comprise a single document attachment to the email;
• begin with a short summary in bullet point form;
• have numbered paragraphs; and
• be in Word format with as little use of colour or logos as possible (Reports are published in black and white).
A copy of the submission should be sent by e-mail to healthcommem@parliament.uk and have the ‘Name of the inquiry’ in the Subject line.
Please supply a postal address so a copy of the Committee’s report can be sent to you upon publication.
It would be helpful, for Data Protection purposes, if individuals submitting written evidence would send their contact details separately in a covering email in a block of text laid out vertically (not horizontally). See example below: eg:
Miss Dee Dee Lee
Westminster House
7 Millbank
London
SW00 0XX
Tel: 0000 000 0000 / Mob: 00000 000000
deedeelee1005@xxxxxxx.uk
You should also be aware that there may be circumstances in which the House of Commons will be required to communicate information to third parties on request, in order to comply with its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Though there is a strong preference for emailed submissions, those without access to a computer should send a hard copy to:
Committee Assistant
Health Committee
Committee Office
House of Commons
7 Millbank
London SW1P 3JA
• A guide for written submissions to Select Committees may be found on the parliamentary website at: Commons: Guide for Witnesses
Please also note that:
• Committees make public much of the evidence they receive during inquiries. If you do not wish your submission to be published, you must clearly say so. If you wish to include private or confidential information in your submission to the Committee, please contact the Clerk of the Committee to discuss this.
• Material already published elsewhere should not form the basis of a submission, but may be referred to within a proposed submission, in which case a hard copy of the published work should be included.
• Evidence submitted must be kept confidential until published by the Committee, unless publication by the person or organisation submitting it is specifically authorised.
• Once submitted, evidence is the property of the Committee. The Committee normally, though not always, chooses to make public the written evidence it receives, by publishing it on the internet (where it will be searchable), by printing it or by making it available through the Parliamentary Archives. If there is any information you believe to be sensitive you should highlight it and explain what harm you believe would result from its disclosure. The Committee will take this into account in deciding whether to publish or further disclose the evidence.
• Select Committees are unable to investigate individual cases.
For up-to-date information on progress of the inquiry visit: http://www.parliament.uk/healthcom